“Wall-E” is a timeless classic that you can’t help but fall in love with. I know that it’s one of my favorite family films. Featuring a cast of lovable robots, the movie promotes a positive message about the necessity of maintaining our planet. But there’s another message, a message about our addiction to technology, particularly artificial intelligence. Technology is a growing industry that makes strides every day. One notable stride to come in recent months is Chat GPT. This is a revolutionary technology, but it is also something that needs careful consideration in terms of how far we really want to advance.

Released this past November, Chat GPT is a chatbot that can answer almost any question a person throws at it. It’s there to help, just like the bots in “Wall-E,” and while it doesn’t seem poised to turn evil and take over the world, that doesn’t mean it can’t still hurt us. This is because it doesn’t stop at answering questions. Users can ask it to compose a song, make a joke, or write anything else they can think of, including an essay. It can even accept critiques to create a more refined product. As seems fairly obvious, a lot of students are taking full advantage of this technology as a tool for academic dishonesty.

Many people feel that this is an issue though. I count myself among the people who believe that a time where students no longer use their minds to write or think critically seems to be looming nearer and nearer. That time is being ushered in by technologies such as Chat GPT and our “advancements” as a technological race. Writing is an essential part of communication. It provides a distinct and important way to communicate thought. But, if people no longer learn how to write, it is an art which may become a lost one. I personally credit writing with many of my successes in school, journalism and speech. It has also been crucial to the successes of history as well. An unfeeling AI likely would not have been able to write a better, more heartfelt yet measured response to the Pearl Harbor attack than President Roosevelt. And I can say that I would want a real person to draft such a significant speech using their own ideas and words. And it has been made clear that other people would probably feel similarly.

The other function that writing essays for school serves is that they force students to find evidence for a stance and put together a rational argument. This makes them think about what they think, why they think it and how they can address other points of view. Combine all of that and you get a recipe for heightened critical thinking skills that are essential for life. Simply asking a bot to do it all takes no critical thinking skills which means another loss in the continued attempt to parent kids into a world that’s changing faster than we can adapt.

The implications of Chat GPT are likely to be profound and negative. Additionally, they will only grow as the supporting technology grows. This to show that advancements in artificial intelligence and automation are coming at us at an astounding rate. Advancing technologies such as Chat GPT have the possibility, more than that, the probability to change the foundation of how we live our lives. But that’s not always a good thing. In this case especially, we see that there are significant problems that can come from Chat GPT, making it a technology that requires careful consideration moving forward. Like in “Wall-E,” our society is seeing a steep rise in technological dependence, making it so that we ourselves may no longer be essential players.